Yet now and again there were incidents which slightly relieved the tedium of existence. As for instance when the notorious Jakey arrived in _chayder_ about an hour late one stifling summer evening. Jakey was in truth a desperate character. His stockings lay invariably over his boots, and the boots themselves knew no other fastening than string. Among the layers of dirt on his face his right eye or his left emerged livid in purple and salmon hues. On numerous occasions he had "wagged" school in order to play pitch and toss with coins, derived who knew whence? in the company of stalwarts fifteen years old, three years his senior. It was in fact during the solemn stillness of "Hebrew" that he arrived. Upon his appearance the hush was intensified into something acute as shrill sound or pain. Slowly, with tight-browed condemnation, Reb Monash turned his head to the truant. "So thou art come!" he said. "Enter! we are incomplete without thee!" With withering courtesy he motioned him to the end of a bench. Nonchalantly moving the tip of his tongue from one cheek to the other Jakey sat down. "_Nu_, Jakele, what hast thou for thyself to say?" he asked, still couchant, as it were, upon his chair. Jakey for several seconds longer kept his tongue in his left cheek. He lifted his brows in interested contemplation. "I had the stomach-ache!" he suggested, clasping his hands against his liver as a piece of convincing by-play. "_Ligner!_" thundered Reb Monash, "Thou art sound as a Hottentot!" Jakey withdrew one hand from his stomach, and lifted a thumb to his mouth. "My muvver's dying!" he said after further meditation. Reb Monash quivered with wrath. "Such a year upon thee! Long live they mother, but thou, thou art a proselytized one!" He advanced to make Jakey more immediately aware of the jeopardy into which his soul had fallen. Jakey looked up shiftily, his eyes watchful. Reb Monash's fist came down upon empty air. Swift as a lizard Jakey darted across to the table. He stood there, Reb Monash's bone-handled stick uplifted. A murmur of horror went round the _chayder_. Reb Monash with a shout of anger advanced raging. And then it was that his own stick, the symbol of more absolute authority than the Shah's, was brought down upon his own shoulder. There was a silence. Then immediately a tremendous hubbub filled the room. Reb Monash sank into his chair. A few of the youngest lads lifted up their voices and wept. A boy in a corner was giggling nervously. "Where is he? Where is he?" asked Reb Monash weakly. An enormity had been perpetrated unknown in the annals of _chayders_. And in his, Reb Monash's, where discipline and holiness were equal stars. "'E's ran away! I seen 'im!" the cry rose. Reb Monash grimly took up once more his book of Hebrew words. The long monotone began again. "_Ishoh?_" "A woman!" "_Sachin?_" "A knife!"